Hello ^_^

[Mermaid90]

Hi!
My name is Holly, I'm 22. I live with my fiancé.

I'm British, born and bred lol

We have 2 Persian cats called Mr James Bigglesworth and Mr Cookie Magoo, a Royal/Ball Python called Captain Cuddles and now we have a 60 litre Biorb with...nothing in it yet lol

Here's a photo of it:

This isn't the first time I've been on a fish forum, we used to have a medium size Marine fish tank and I was on a marine fish tank forum but things went really bad with said tank; we lost nearly all our livestock. Luckily, we were able to save a few fish plus a lot of corals and gave them to a friend.

We received our Biorb yesterday, set it up as the instructions said and went to go and purchase our first fish earlier today (it said in the booklet provided that we could add our first fish today).
So we go to our LFS, pick out a few we'd like etc and the person helping us said we'd have to wait for the Nitrogen Cycle to go through until the Levels (Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate) go down to zero.

At the moment our levels are:
Ammonia: 0.25 ppm
Nitrite: 0.0 ppm
Nitrate: 40 ppm

Does this mean the Nitrogen Cycle is nearly over (if it even began lol)?
Should I wait? If so, for how long?
Am I about to get a really bad algae break out?

I've also noticed at the bottom of my Biorb it's started to get a white-ish dust and has tiny air bubbles trapped on the walls and "plants"

What could it be?

Any help would be great

 

[GouramiJay]

Welcome

 

[techen]

Welcome, You need to cycle this tank. It can take 4-6 weeks so do not rush things or it could mean loosing fish rather quickly.

Please check this out and have a good read of it.

http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?/topic/113861-fishless-cycling/

 

[Mermaid90]

I read a topic about how to do a "fishless cycle" using flake food (it came up on a different website when I was looking up Biorbs on Google), we're trying that at the moment.
Isn't 4-6 weeks a little long? I mean, I could understand if it was a Marine tank with it being such a delicate eco system but I thought it wouldn't take as long with a tropical.

 

[techen]

Marine cycles are shorter than fresh water believe it or not. 4-6 weeks is quite normal for a cycle and is no way to long. You can not rush a cycle and there is no product that can do it in a few days never mind weeks. If you gave the thread a good read you'll know what to do, any questions feel free to ask

 

[Mermaid90]

Thank you ever so much , you learn something new everyday lol

 

[Ps3Steveo]